Mahesh Karigowda
Houston,TX
Summary
Test Lead with a strong background in HPC systems validation, Agile test methods, and global team coordination. Leads end-to-end testing across servers, networking, drivers, and operating systems, while managing defect tracking, qualification reports, and product release readiness.
Overview
11
11
years of professional experience
Work History
Test Lead-Systems
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (contractor)
Houston, Texas
08.2022 - Current
- Project entailed Integrating and validating High Performance Computing (HPC) Server platform air/liquid cooled with Mellanox InfiniBand, Cray Slingshot, and Intel OPA networking products
- This included end-to-end quality assurance of product before releasing them to the customers by performing Unit, Integration, System, Regression, Performance and Stress validation
- Test Lead - Establish test requirements, Agile test methodology and tool usage in conjunction with other Teams
- Participate, Review, and provide feedback on product documents like Plan of Record, Statement of Work, Closure Reports, User Guides, Administrator Guides
- Coordinating and managing the teams at different global locations
- Preparing the Qualification report of Intel OPA, Mellanox InfiniBand and Cray Cassini products on HPC
- Participate in technical collaboration meetings and provide periodic reviews on implementation
- Tracking the Testing Progress and results of the Test Cycle
- Certifying the Red Hat, Windows OS using the latest shipping test kit
- Validating the firmware of Mellanox InfiniBand (HDR 200 Gb), Cray Cassini and Intel Omni path
- Performing the performance test on 100,200,400 &800 Gb InfiniBand Fabric switches supported
- Validating Sata/SaS and Nvme drives in cray XD systems
- Validating the Intel (IFS) and Mellanox OFED drivers across RHEL, Windows and SUSE Operating Systems
- Qualifying Intel/AMD High Performance Computing (HPC) Processors by performing load test
- Document the software defects, debug and track bug resolutions efforts
Principal Software Development Engineer in test
Dell Technologies (Contractor)
Bengaluru, India
08.2021 - 07.2022
- Supported ready solution bundle for networking components in fully virtualized infrastructure.
- Worked with virtual servers, storage, and network resources.
- Used standard IT virtualization technologies on high-volume service switch and storage hardware to virtualize network functions.
- Reviewed test plan and test cases for product under test.
- Set up test bed on mapped configuration.
- Created virtual environment with servers and validated environment against test plan.
- Tracked testing progress and test-cycle results.
- Logged defects in Jira and re-verified issues after fixes were provided.
Delivery Software Engineer
Hewlett Packard (Contractor)
Taipei, Taiwan
10.2018 - 08.2021
- Project deals at carrying out the Testing in different builds of Firmware/Hardware/Software/Drivers for HPE ProLiant Servers, HPE Blade Storage, Modular Smart Array, Just Bunch of Disks [JBODs], Customer Requirement Testing on supported Enterprise operating systems - Windows, Linux and VMware
- Configure test bed set up for manual and automation testing on HPE ProLiant Server series (DL/XL) according to test configuration details mentioned in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)
- Integrate different Hard Drive Types [SAS HDD/SATA HDD] in HPE ProLiant Servers and Storage Enclosures
- Test Smart Array Controller Firmware to verify the functionality of controller features such as RAID, Encryption, Smart Cache, Array Expansion, spare, write back/Write through cache etc
- Validate Smart Array drivers on various Server Operating Systems (Windows, Red Hat Linux, SUSE Linux and VMware) for hardware and software RAID
- Log the issues identified during testing phase in Quality Information Exchange (QuIX- PCT)
- Co-ordinate with offshore and onsite team on regular basis regarding remote test setups
Associate Software Engineer
Hewlett Packard (Offshore)
Bengaluru, India
06.2015 - 10.2018
- Functional and Performance testing on various Network adapters like Broadcom, Intel, Emulex, Mellanox & QLogic NIC Adapters (Embedded / Standalone / Mezzanine) Drivers and Firmware and various other features for HP ProLiant Support on Operating Systems such as Windows, Linux &VMware (ESXi)
- Testing on iSCSI, FCoE and FC support for various NIC Adapters with various MSA's (2040, 2050)
- Validating various vendor firmware and driver deliverables
- Planning, estimating the duration for test phases
- Write test cases for unit level, functional and integration testing
- Validation of Windows/Linux operating system by setting the storage controller mode to RAID/HBA
- Testing on different environment for BFS (iSCSI, FCoE) with CNA, HBA network adapter on different flavored of OS
- Coordinating with the onshore team and completing the project activities as per the schedule
- Log the issues found during testing phase in HPE QuIX (defect tracking system)
Education
Bachelor of Computer Application - Computer Science
Bangalore University
01-2014
Skills
- Agile methodology
- Team Management
- Quality Assurance
- Firmware Validation
- High-Performance Computing
- Post Silicon Validation
- Test planning
- Network troubleshooting
- Documentation review
- Effective communication
- Defect tracking and reporting
- System testing
- Integration testing
- Defect tracking
- Debugging
- Test Plans Development
- System Integration
- Customer Centric Configurations
- Hardware Configuration
- Software Configuration
- System Deployment
- System Validation
- Vendor Collaboration
- Hardware/Software Error Analysis
- Log Capturing
- Firmware Testing
- Resource Planning
- Quality Reporting
- Server Architecture Knowledge
- HW/SW Problem Debugging
- Software Stack Validation
- Driver Validation
- Networking Benchmarking
- Reliability Assessment
- Scalability Assessment
- Stability Assessment
- High-speed Ethernet Administration
- InfiniBand Administration
- Shell Scripting
- Software Testing Lifecycle
- Testing Methodology Management
- Protocols Knowledge
- Interconnect Technologies Knowledge
- Server Management Knowledge
- Networking Technologies Knowledge
- Storage Controllers Knowledge
- Server Knowledge
- CPU Knowledge
- Networking Knowledge
- HPC systems testing
- Performance testing
Awards
- Summit Award multiple times for work excellence and Quality
- Received Appreciation of Excellence 'Pat on The Back' & 'Bug Stops with Me' from the Global Business Head for the Initiatives and Solutions
Technologies
HPE Smart Array (P2xx, P4xx, P8xx, P7xx), HPE Dynamic Smart Array, HPE Cray Exascale, HPE Apollo, HPE ProLiant Servers (DL, ML, BL, XL) G7 to Gen12, Intel (Sapphire Rapids, HBM), AMD (Rome, Milan, Bergamo, Genoa), HPE Networking (Intel, Mellanox, Cray, Emulex, Broadcom), HPE Aruba/ProCurve, Mellanox switches, Linux (RHEL, SLES, Ubuntu, Cent OS), Windows, Shell scripting, iperf, OSU, IMB, IXIA, NVqual, xHPL, IB verbs, CXI verbs, DGEMM, Intel (PTU, MLC, SHC), Meat Grinder, Stream, HP Cluster Test, QC, ALM, JIRA, Black Box, Integration, Stress and Performance Testing, Agile Methodologies
Core Competencies
SAS, SATA, NVMe, UEFI, TCP/IP, DHCP, FTP, SSH, Telnet, PCIe, USB, XGMI, UPI, NVlink, iLO, BMC, IPMI, Redfish, RoCE, Ethernet, RDMA, InfiniBand (EDR, HDR, NDR)
Affiliations
Accomplished athlete with a strong background in competitive sports, including being an under-16 State-level Volleyball player, a Gold Medalist at Bangalore University, and a State-level Professional Bodybuilder, demonstrating discipline, teamwork, and leadership.
Languages
- English
- Tamil
- Telugu
- Hindi
- kannada
Timeline
Test Lead-Systems
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (contractor)
08.2022 - Current
Principal Software Development Engineer in test
Dell Technologies (Contractor)
08.2021 - 07.2022
Delivery Software Engineer
Hewlett Packard (Contractor)
10.2018 - 08.2021
Associate Software Engineer
Hewlett Packard (Offshore)
06.2015 - 10.2018
Bachelor of Computer Application - Computer Science
Bangalore University